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Two-way hinges Answered

My wife and I bought an 80s designed house that's not that well designed. We keep one of the litter boxes for our cats in the garage, which is accessed from the inside through the laundry room; and we want to install cat doors so our aging felines can pass through the doors easily to get to it, while keeping the draft from the garage out of the family room. The interior door (between family and laundry rooms) is a standard hollow core and the exterior door (between laundry and garage) is fire code rated solid wood door.

We tried a standard top-hinged door with the cats already, at our old apartment, and the cats didn't take to it, so we we're hoping to do french doors, since they know how to get through normal doors pretty well. But we're kinda stuck on our lack of knowledge about hinge designs; we need hinges that swing both ways.

Has anyone out there successfully completed such a design/installation and would be willing to share pics and secrets?

There are "bidirectional" or "double acting" hinges available, though they seem to be rather pricey (US$15 to $50). With such a hinge, you wouldn't need to do a dual "french door" design, just a side-mounted swinging cat door.

In doing this search, I tried "side hinged pet doors", and ran across this:

It seems expensive to me, but the pictures might inspire you to build your own. In place of actual double-acting hinges (above), you might consider a pivot post (a dowel which extends above and below the door into the frame), maybe with trim magnets to hold the door closed when not in use.